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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Rachel FranklinORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Over the last two centuries, the impact of the Human System has grown dramatically, becoming strongly dominant within the Earth System in many different ways. Consumption, inequality, and population have increased extremely fast, especially since about 1950, threatening to overwhelm the many critical functions and ecosystems of the Earth System. Changes in the Earth System, in turn, have important feedback effects on the Human System, with costly and potentially serious consequences. However, current models do not incorporate these critical feedbacks. We argue that in order to understand the dynamics of either system, Earth System Models must be coupled with Human System Models through bidirectional couplings representing the positive, negative, and delayed feedbacks that exist in the real systems. In particular, key Human System variables, such as demographics, inequality, economic growth, and migration, are not coupled with the Earth System but are instead driven by exogenous estimates, such as United Nations population projections. This makes current models likely to miss important feedbacks in the real Earth–Human system, especially those that may result in unexpected or counterintuitive outcomes, and thus requiring different policy interventions from current models. The importance and imminence of sustainability challenges, the dominant role of the Human System in the Earth System, and the essential roles the Earth System plays for the Human System, all call for collaboration of natural scientists, social scientists, and engineers in multidisciplinary research and modeling to develop coupled Earth–Human system models for devising effective science-based policies and measures to benefit current and future generations.
Author(s): Motesharrei S, Rivas J, Kalnay E, Asrar GR, Busalacchi AJ, Cahalan RF, Cane MA, Colwell RR, Feng K, Franklin RS, Hubacek K, Miralles-Wilhelm F, Miyoshi T, Ruth M, Sagdeev R, Shirmohammadi A, Shukla J, Srebric J, Yakovenko VM, Zeng N
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: National Science Review
Year: 2016
Volume: 3
Issue: 4
Pages: 470-494
Print publication date: 01/12/2016
Online publication date: 11/12/2016
Acceptance date: 23/10/2016
Date deposited: 11/09/2018
ISSN (print): 2095-5138
ISSN (electronic): 2053-714X
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nww081
DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nww081
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